Dear Pilots,
Today we would like to show you some surprise items coming to ROF that you will be able to experience on your computer soon. It's fun to work with such an enthusiastic team because they always put in extra hours and sometimes this extra effort is spent researching new technologies or ideas and surprise breakthroughs are the result.
One such idea is the creation of WWI Gunsights! Since the creation of the British S.E.5a, many of you have asked us to create an "Aldis" sight for it. We never ignored this idea and we knew that we would be able to do it at some point in the future. For instance, attachments points for this sight have been installed on the aircraft since its first release. Amazingly, the future arrived sooner than we thought and soon you will have the opportunity to add the Aldis to your plane. This simple idea, combined with an interesting engineering solution, allowed WWI pilots to have a more accurate aim. We tried not only to reproduce the look of the instrument, but also accurately convey how it works.
Certain German planes will also have a special gunsight available to help them aim. It will be available in two versions, for day and night use. The day sight will be equipped with an additional filter that allows the reticule to be seen even in bright light. The in-game execution of this filter will be simulated in the project very realistically.
After finishing principle work on these sights, we decided to expand the work and adopt an idea that was first requested on the forum. Some of the guys decided to put in extra time to make even more equipment available and for many more aircraft in ROF. As a result, we will offer you additional purchasing options on our website to equip your favorite aircraft with what we are calling “Field Modifications”. Current ROF policy is to provide airplanes in a factory fresh state. This means new aircraft come to the front with equipment options our research has told us equipped these planes as default. As has been pointed out to us on the forum and from widely available data regarding the history of aviation technology of the First World War, we know that many aircraft were fine-tuned by mechanics and additional equipment was added to front-line aircraft. Talented individuals created many small improvements that made piloting early combat planes much easier. These changes were adopted based on hard won experience and often at the cost of a pilot’s life. But even more lives were saved with the help of these modifications and they helped bring glory to victorious to pilots who were able to use these enhancements in combat. The most common modifications in the field was the installation of additional devices such as altimeters, temperature sensors, clocks, compasses, fuel level indicators and lamps for night lighting – some of these items were even taken from downed enemy aircraft and were installed on friendly machines. Sometimes these were trophies, passing from one pilot to another or items purchased from mechanics or traded for with other squadrons. For instance, German fighter aircraft often used RAF gunsights. Our Field Modification program gives an opportunity to experience a similar system by outfitting different planes with their respective Field Mod kits.
You will soon be able to buy these filed modifications in our store. They were created for each aircraft individually, based on already installed equipment and therefore will have different prices. For some aircraft in the package there will be up to nine items and for some only a single item. The cost of the most expensive field modification for one aircraft is currently $5.00 and the lowest is just $1.00.
We will also offer Field Mod bundles so you can outfit many planes at a time for a reduced overall cost.
You can choose which devices to install on your aircraft before each mission in the hangar. You can install all modifications for an aircraft or combinations of them. The exceptions are gunsights, some planes were able to use a couple different gunsights, but you can use only one gunsight at a time.
We hope that such attention to detail will please you. If this idea proves to be popular with our community, we can develop some more cool stuff in this direction and in the future we may be able to offer you different options for modifying weapon load outs for aircraft including some rare options. An example of this could be an additional machine gun on a top wing for several planes, or rear-view mirrors or cutting out sections of the upper wing to improve visibility and many other unique engineering solutions invented during the First World War.
Good luck in your flights and keep watching our News blog for more news!